Story V-3

INVICTUS

In the blinding darkness of an untamed grey scale jungle a black tiger with white tattoos sits between a majestic ankh shaped oak tree and a small creek. Resting calmly in the lotus position, he looks down into the flowing stream of water at small coy fish swimming by. He sits peering deep into the glassy surface of the water, and the fish then dissolve into images relating to pain, ignorance, death, sadness, sickness and corruption. Having seen enough, he looks up, takes a deep breath, and closes his eyes, hoping to find some sort of peace in his mind. He imagines a blank black space, then artistically fabricates a cognitive copy of his meditating body out of the yin yang symbol.

Once fully constructed, the top of his head fragments literally opening his mind. Then gray scaled motion graphic designs start to grow and flourish out of his head recreating the "real" world out of geometric shapes and lines. The remaining geometry expansively flows from his head creating a structure resembling a neuro-cluster. Likewise, a smaller abstract version of the body is created out of these remnants. This smaller version, the mind, is also black and white, but has stripes instead of tattoos. He observes the neurological net work as it forms a tree of knowledge. Then like colorful fruit growing from the tree, seven monochromatic icons begin to grow and multiply on the branches relating to new age religion, traditional religion, science, mythology, philosophy, astro-theology, and astronomy. He touches one of the icons and small expanding puzzle pieces explode out of it. Next he watches as the representative icon travels through out his body and then it color starts to slowly become apparent in the world. He touches a different icon and the same thing happens. Then he jumps into the tree and begins free running through it colorizing the world and enriching his mind. After being released, the groups of puzzle pieces join together in the center of the tree to create a large hand pointing up to the sky.

Suddenly, a flash of light from above the clouds demands his attention, and he looks up to find a mysterious back lit figure floating above the limits of the sky. Driven by curiosity, he free runs to the top of the huge tree like structure. After overcoming the self constructed psychological obstacle course, he comes face to face with the floating figure. Astonishingly, he finds that the winged stranger is in fact an illuminated version of him self with multiple arms and wings. After the effects of awe ware off, the soul gathers up the puzzle pieces into a circle. They then gather into their respective monochromatic groups and the groups transform into hands pointing into the center point in which a yin yang forms. The seven hands then move into the yin yang one at a time each manifesting as dualistic opposites as light and dark images. After the last one enters, the yin yang begins to glow with golden galactic light and explodes into golden fragments that swirl in to the center of the minds head, eternally illuminating him with the light of the winged spirit.

Enlightened, he turns around and looks down at the representation of the body that he arose from. He opens his arms receptively and the body starts to slowly rise. They then float up to the winged spirit and unite with it simultaneously existing as the unified one and the subdivided all wile the back ground fades into a rotating galaxy. Suddenly, the real tiger opens his eyes revealing the same galactic light inside of them. He looks back out into the dark jungle, and colors slowly start to fade into the gray scaled terrain. Finally, the sun rises behind him revealing a world that is fresh new and beautiful, yet completely the same. Fade to black